Tank Hard!

While browsing various blogs today, I noticed mention that more bag/storage space may be coming! For warriors, this is great news as we often find ourselves carrying around several sets of gear so we can be prepared for any situation!

Drysc was quoted as saying:

We’re mindful of space concerns, and increasing the base backpack size is certainly a possibility for the future. We have other space and storage increases currently in the works for release before Wrath though, and we’ll be talking about those soon?.

Notice that he says BEFORE Wrath! Hrm, I wonder what they could be up to?

Taken from www.wrathofthelichking.com

So you’ve been running heroics for a while now, maybe Heroic Mechanar for your [item]The Sun Eater[/item], and in the meantime, you’ve been collecting those [item]Badge of Justice[/item]. So what do you spend them on? As a warrior tank, you have a few options:

My Suggestion

My suggestion is to get the [item]Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600[/item] first. This is an amazing trinket for both threat as well as mitigation with the added shield block. When you need more avoidance, swap in [item]Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch[/item] (from Moroes) on boss mobs.

Of course there is also the Epic Fire Resist gear that can be bought here, but you won’t need this level of Fire Resist gear until well into end raid content. There is also a good amount of DPS style gear available for Badges if you want to flesh out your DPS set.

Karthis is a feral druid who writes about druid tanking in his blog, Of Teeth and Claws. He has written an article factoring in rage as it pertains to threat.

He quotes from WoWBlues:

Gaining Power (Mana / Energy / Rage) also causes threat in most cases, for example taking a healing potion, or gaining rage from Bloodrage, or Energy from Thistle Tea.

[...]

For normal abilities, each point of Mana is 0.5 threat, Rage is 5 threat, and Energy is unknown, probably 5.

[...]

These forms of buffs all have infinite range; they will cause threat to all mobs on whose threat list you are on. Furthermore, the threat caused is split equally among all the affected mobs.

[...]

Note that threat caused from Power Gain is not affected by threat modifiers. Gaining 1 point of Rage will give 5 threat whether you are in Battle Stance or Defensive Stance.

For me, this is particularly interesting as my typical pre-pull setup is to Berserker Stance -> Berserker Rage -> Defensive Stance -> Bloodrage -> Pull

What this means is that I could actually generate more rage by doing the Pull BEFORE I hit Bloodrage. Doing so would help generate a bit more threat on the initial pull.

Last night we completed this week’s Kara run for my group. It took us just under 6 hours total and we one-shotted everything front to back except Prince and a silly wipe on Netherspite (healers stay out of the black holes!). On our Nightbane kill I was fortunate enough to pick up [item]Shield of Impenetrable Darkness[/item]. This upgraded my [item]Crest of the Sha’tar[/item]. I slapped [item]Formula: Enchant Shield - Major Stamina[/item] onto it for good measure.

I am pretty happy with my current gear. I have my eyes on [item]Shermanar Great-Ring[/item] and [item]Gilded Thorium Cloak[/item], not to mention eventually getting the Tier 4 items at some point.

We’ll be making our first attempts on High King and Gruul within the next week or two. I feel we are ready, but unfortunately we don’t quite have the roster to hit up 25 mans yet. Considering we’ve only really started hitting Kara around the first of June, I’d say we’ve come a long way.

So today I turned in my [item]Furies Deck[/item] and received my [item]Darkmoon Card: Vengeance[/item]. My standard normal tanking trinkets are now [item]Darkmoon Card: Vengeance[/item] and [item]Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600[/item] or [item]Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch[/item], depending upon the encounter.

I am hoping it will generate a fair amount of threat in addition to the +51 Stamina. The listed 10% proc rate would basically average out to about 10 points of average return damage per hit. Of course, this trinket will be very nice for multitanking. I’ll report back my findings as I’ve had a chance to try out this new toy!